Category Archives: Press Releases

LOS ALTOS, CA–(Marketwired – December 18, 2014) – Saffron, the first artificially intelligent, cognitive computing platform that learns, reasons and anticipates like you and for you, today announced it has been awarded U.S. Patent #8,909,609, “Methods, systems and computer program products for providing a distributed associative memory base.” Saffron focuses on helping companies within the industrial internet optimize product lifecycle management and personalized customer experience by knowing the customer individually, providing faster insight to defect and issue resolution, and insuring that the knowledge of one is available to many.

The patent is the second of two awarded for Saffron’s Memory Base, which defines the patterns from data using statistical dependencies between the dots over time to anticipate what is not yet in data, similar to our brain using past experiences to anticipate future outcomes. This newer patent is focused specifically on a technique to compress the memory base so that it can be accessed and modified more efficiently, saving time and reducing total cost of ownership for Saffron’s customers.

The inventors were Saffron’s Chief Software Engineer, President and Co-Founder Jim Fleming along with Yen-min Huang, the company’s Chief Scientist. The patent was initially filed in June of 2009, and the technology described in the patent has been in use for several generations of Saffron’s platform.

“Saffron can ingest and process enormous amounts of data, but equally important is distributing the knowledge created from this data, so customers can quickly and contextually access this knowledge while in the field,” explained Saffron CEO Gayle Sheppard. “Since we utilize lossless compression techniques and support real-time, instant learning, Saffron memories can be retrieved or edited without decompressing and recompressing, delivering a knowledge store efficiency for our customers that is an order of magnitude beyond what other solutions have attempted.”

Saffron recently unveiled Saffron 10, the newest version of its groundbreaking Natural Intelligence Platform. Saffron 10 fuses the power of computing with brain-like intelligence, enabling organizations to more quickly focus on the knowledge that matters to them most (including things they may not think to look for), anticipate what will happen next, and optimize decisions based on that criteria.

Saffron deploys a patentedassociative memory or “natural learning” approach. It finds connections among data across diverse sources without the need for rules or modeling, while learning incrementally and anticipating outcomes based on patterns it finds in the data. Designed to be easily integrated with existing investments and initiatives, Saffron 10 ingests data natively from databases, file systems, and common file formats, making it seamless for businesses to apply the power of Saffron to other applications.

Systems, methods and computer program products are provided for a distributed associative memory base. Such methods may include providing a distributed memory base that includes a network of networks of associative memory networks. The memory base may include a network of associative memory networks, a respective associative memory network comprising associations among a respective observer entity and a plurality of observed entities that are observed by the respective observer entity. Ones of the associative memory networks are physically and/or logically independent from other ones of the associative memory networks. Methods include imagining associations from the associative memory base using a plurality of streaming queues that correspond to ones of a plurality of rows of ones of the associative memory networks.

Saffron is the first cognitive computing platform that learns, reasons and anticipates like you, for you. The platform learns instantly from multi-sourced and types of data to adapt in real time, automatically connecting the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters and to help you anticipate what will happen next. Saffron enhances the speed and volumes at which data can be processed but also critically improves the accuracy of results. Businesses using Saffron can anticipate market trends, optimize processes, mitigate risk, personalize customer experiences and find new revenue streams. Founded in 1999, Saffron is headquartered in Los Altos, California. For more information, please visitwww.saffrontech.com.

This Partnership Will Benefit a Larger Number of Customers Invested in Cloudera Environment Who Can Now Seamlessly Add Powerful Cognitive Analytic Capabilities Into Their Big Data Initiatives

LOS ALTOS, CA–(Marketwired – December 10, 2014) – Saffron, the first artificially intelligent, cognitive computing platform that learns, reasons and anticipates like you and for you, today announced it has achieved the Cloudera Bronze Technology Partner status. Cloudera is the leader in enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop™. This is the beginning of a deeper technical integration that will benefit a larger number of customers from the industrial internet who have invested in a Cloudera/Hadoop environment and are willing to take their operational intelligence to the next level. They can now seamlessly add powerful cognitive analytic capabilities without having to move from Hadoop to other data stores or standard file systems in order to process this data in Saffron.

Saffron recently unveiled Saffron 10, the newest version of its groundbreaking Natural Intelligence Platform. Saffron 10 fuses the power of computing with brain-like intelligence, enabling organizations to more quickly focus on the knowledge that matters to them most (including things they may not think to look for), anticipate what will happen next, and optimize decisions based on that criteria. Specifically, Saffron focuses on helping companies within the industrial internet optimize product development, manufacturing and maintenance through real-time customer feedback, anomaly detection, root cause analysis and experience management, creating new revenue opportunities, increasing customer satisfaction and mitigating operational risk.

“Companies across manufacturing, financial services and others have seen increased use of Cloudera for managing their Big Data initiatives. We have powered up their Big Data support engine with the industry’s most advanced cognitive computing platform. Just as important, Cloudera customers are not required to move large datasets between Hadoop and intermediate formats in order to leverage their Hadoop-based data in Saffron. With Saffron’s cognitive analytics, Cloudera customers can now leverage Saffron’s instant learning and contextual reasoning capabilities to discover insights from big, noisy data faster and more efficiently than every before possible,” said Saffron CEO Gayle Sheppard.

Saffron deploys a patentedassociative memory or “natural learning” approach. It finds connections among data across diverse sources without the need for rules or modeling, while learning incrementally and anticipating outcomes based on patterns it finds in the data. Designed to be easily integrated with existing investments and initiatives, Saffron 10 ingests data natively from databases, file systems, and common file formats, making it seamless for businesses to apply the power of Saffron to other applications.

Cloudera Technology partners go through a rigorous certification process to ensure that their hardware platform or software application work on Cloudera and differentiate by demonstrating interoperability with Cloudera’s enterprise data hub.

About Cloudera

Cloudera is revolutionizing enterprise data management by offering the first unified Platform for Big Data, an enterprise data hub built on Apache Hadoop. Cloudera offers enterprises one place to store, access, process, secure, and analyze all their data, empowering them to extend the value of existing investments while enabling fundamental new ways to derive value from their data. Cloudera’s open source Big Data platform is the most widely adopted in the world, and Cloudera is the most prolific contributor to the open source Hadoop ecosystem. As the leading educator of Hadoop professionals, Cloudera has trained over 22,000 individuals worldwide. Over 1,200 partners and a seasoned professional services team help deliver greater time to value. Finally, only Cloudera provides proactive and predictive support to run an enterprise data hub with confidence. Leading organizations in every industry plus top public sector organizations globally run Cloudera in production.

About Saffron

Saffron is the first cognitive computing platform that learns, reasons and anticipates like you, for you. The platform learns instantly from multi-sourced and types of data to adapt in real time, automatically connecting the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters and to help you anticipate what will happen next. Saffron enhances the speed and volumes at which data can be processed but also critically improves the accuracy of results. Businesses using Saffron can anticipate market trends, optimize processes, mitigate risk, personalize customer experiences and find new revenue streams. Founded in 1999, Saffron is headquartered in Los Altos, California. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

Enables organizations to embrace “the Intelligence of Every ‘Thing’,” delivers enhanced speed and volumes at which data can be processed while critically improving the accuracy of results

Los Altos, CA, October 16, 2014 – Saffron Technology, the first cognitive computing platform that learns, reasons and anticipates like you and for you, today unveiled Saffron 10, the newest version of its groundbreaking Natural Intelligence Platform. Saffron 10 fuses the power of computing with brain-like intelligence, enabling organizations to more quickly focus on the knowledge that matters to them most (including things you may not think to look for), anticipate what will happen next, and optimize decisions based on that criteria.

“Cognitive systems are beginning to have a dramatic impact on enterprises providing answers, recommendations and courses of action to difficult problems,’ explains David Schubmehl, Research Director, IDC. “Saffron 10’s new machine learning algorithms, ‘Thought Processes’, and the ability to interact seamlessly with other big data systems such as Hadoop will provide organizations with the tools and capabilities that they need to implement high ROI advisory and recommendation solutions,” continued Schubmehl.

Like the human brain, Saffron 10 connects information at the entity level to learn how a particular fact, event, person, product, outcome or “thing” connects to everything else. It understands the context behind these connections, providing businesses with the essential tools to see specific events or patterns hidden in large, complex data sets.

Saffron deploys a patentedassociative memory, or “natural learning” approach, that finds connections among data across diverse sources, without the need for rules or modeling, while learning incrementally and anticipating outcomes based on patterns it finds in the data. Designed to be easily integrated with existing investments and initiatives, Saffron 10 ingests data natively from all legacy file systems, making it seamless for businesses to apply the power of Saffron to other applications.

“Saffron 10 is hastening our vision of powering the Intelligence of Every ‘Thing’. The explosion of devices and sensors require a next generation of data sense making tools squarely focused on separating the signal from the noise, allowing users to not just see important patterns, but anticipate and adapt on-the-fly as new information arrives,” said Saffron CEO Gayle Sheppard. “By combining these composite memories with a deep understanding of time and sequence, Saffron is enabling far more accurate risk analysis, personalization, fraud detection, and other solutions that were previously limited by static data modeling and non-temporal understanding,” continued Sheppard.

Saffron Technology is the first cognitive computing platform that learns, reasons and anticipates like you, for you. The platform learns incrementally and adapts in real time, ingesting data from disparate sources and automatically connecting the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters and anticipate what will happen next. Saffron enhances the speed and volumes at which data can be processed but also critically improves the accuracy of results. Businesses using Saffron can anticipate market trends, optimize processes, mitigate risk, personalize customer experiences or find new revenue streams. Founded in 1999, Saffron Technology is headquartered in Los Altos, California. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

LOS ALTOS, CA–(Marketwired – September 29, 2014) – Saffron Technology is pleased to announce that it has received the Silver Stevie Award for “Best New Product of the Year – Software – Big Data Solution” in the 11th Annual International Business Awards. This trophy affirms Saffron’s leading innovative approach to combining the power of computing with brain-like intelligence to extend Fortune 1000 companies’ ability to realized true intelligence about every “thing” and create personalized services based on contextual experience.

Stevie Award winners were selected by more than 250 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from May through early August. Saffron is an inaugural winner in the Big Data Solution category, which was newly added to the Stevie Awards in 2014. Awards will be presented to winners at a gala awards banquet in Paris, France on 10 October.

“With an estimated market size of $16.1 billion, according to Gartner Research, the big data products and services fulfillment world is growing six times faster than the overall IT market itself. So how does a company go from investing in big data analytics to making it a daily, competitive operational advantage for their business? By using data to create true contextualized experiences for a customer, personalizing maintenance for each asset instead of class, or creating an operational intelligence environment where a customer’s interactions with a manufacturer’s products feeds directly back into product, manufacturing, delivery and service design,” said Saffron CEO Gayle Sheppard.

“Saffron has invented the first true cognitive computing approach to organizing data, that is similar to how the human brain processes sensemaking — understanding how things are connected or similar in order to anticipate what will happen next and decide what to do about it. Saffron learns from all experiences and outcomes, identifying similarities and patterns over time to anticipate what may unfold. In manufacturing, customers are reducing cycle times and producing significant savings using Saffron’s operational intelligence applications to anticipate maintenance issues before problems arise and to quickly identify the cause of product manufacturing quality issues in order to get products to market and assets back to work at a scale never achieved before,” continued Sheppard.

Saffron Technology combines the power of computing with brain-like intelligence to make sense of data and anticipate future trends and events. The platform learns incrementally and adapts in real time, ingesting data from disparate sources and automatically connecting the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters. Saffron enhances the speed and volumes at which data can be processed but also critically improves the accuracy of results. Businesses using Saffron can anticipate market trends, optimize processes, mitigate risk, personalize customer experiences or find new revenue streams. Founded in 1999, Saffron Technology is headquartered in Los Altos, California. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

Saffron Technology, which combines the power of computing with brain-like intelligence to extend Fortune 1000 companies’ ability to illuminate the knowledge that matters in all data and make more informed and accurate decisions, announced today that it is entering into a partnership with ManTech International Corporation to deliver its cognitive computing platform to the financial services industry.

“Fraud has evolved and lawbreakers are getting more sophisticated and elusive,” explained Saffron CEO Gayle Sheppard. “Traditional rules-based systems are no longer sufficient to detect and anticipate fraudulent behavior. Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform unifies both structured and unstructured data to continuously learn about new and adapting patterns through a model-free approach. Now our customers can anticipate new forms of fraud and stay several steps ahead.”

Saffron combines the power of computing with brain-like intelligence to make sense of data and anticipate future trends and events. Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform mimics our brain’s ability to associate people, places and things in context, but at scales that far exceed human capabilities. Saffron ingests data from disparate sources and automatically connects the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters. Every time new data is received, Saffron builds associations with existing memories to find new patterns, similarities, anomalies or sequences, revealing new information that would have remained undetected otherwise. Saffron learns incrementally and adapts in real-time from new incoming data and human feedback.

Saffron integrates with an organization’s existing analytics architecture to not only enhance the speed and volumes at which data can be converted to usable knowledge but also critically improve the accuracy of results. Saffron’s customers have applied our platform to a number of hard problems, supporting decision making, diagnostics and anticipatory predictions in such areas as anticipating market trends, optimizing processes, identifying extraneous costs, mitigating operational risk and threats, personalizing customer experiences or finding new revenue streams.

In March, Saffron announced the completion of a $7 million series B round of venture capital, which will also fund a new global headquarters in Silicon Valley.

About Saffron Technology

Saffron Technology combines the power of computing with brain-like intelligence to make sense of data and anticipate future trends and events. The platform learns incrementally and adapts in real time, ingesting data from disparate sources and automatically connecting the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters. Saffron enhances the speed and volumes at which data can be processed but also critically improves the accuracy of results. Businesses using Saffron can anticipate market trends, optimize processes, mitigate risk, personalize customer experiences or find new revenue streams. Founded in 1999, Saffron Technology is headquartered in Los Altos, California. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

About ManTech International Corporation

ManTech is a leading provider of innovative technologies and solutions for mission-critical national security programs for the intelligence community; the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Energy and Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the health and space communities; and other U.S. federal government customers. We provide support to critical national security programs for approximately 50 federal agencies through approximately 1,000 current contracts. ManTech’s expertise includes cyber security; command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) solutions and services; information technology (IT) modernization and sustainment; intelligence/counter-intelligence solutions and support; systems engineering; healthcare analytics and IT; global logistics support; test and evaluation; and environmental, range, and sustainability services. ManTech supports major national missions, such as military readiness and wellness, terrorist threat detection, information security and border protection. Additional information on ManTech can be found at www.mantech.com.

Saffron Technology is proud to announce that Chris Sailer, a seven year veteran of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has joined the company as Vice President of Professional Services. Saffron combines the power of computing with brain-like intelligence to extend Fortune 1000 companies’ ability to illuminate the knowledge that matters in all data and make more informed and accurate decisions. Sailer is well known as a thought leader in the risk management industry and will utilize his extensive background in operational risk intelligence to lead Saffron’s client services and customer support teams.

As Head of Risk Management & Analysis during a seven-year position at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he was responsible for the daily monitoring and assessment of the organization’s risk environment and developing long-term strategies for mitigating future threats. He served previously as a Special Agent with the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIDC), and as a civilian intelligence contractor for L3 Communications.

“I am delighted to have Chris join us to lead a high performance client services team,” stated Saffron CEO Gayle Sheppard. “We enjoyed a terrific collaboration with Chris and his team as we implemented Saffron’s risk intelligence capabilities within the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As Saffron continues to lead in this next generation of operational risk intelligence, Chris’s leadership and expertise will be an enormous benefit to our customers and to Saffron.”

“I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Saffron and deploy its risk management capabilities while at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” Sailer explained. “In my new position with Saffron, I look forward to helping a wide range of organizations achieve similar benefits.”

Sailer also brings a significant network of both private and public risk management alliances. He is a board member of the Security Analysis and Risk Management Association (SARMA) and was selected in 2013 as the foundation’s representative to the Domestic Security Executive Academy (DSEA) at the FBI Academy, Quantico, VA. He is currently participating in “The Trusted Workforce of 2025,” a White House sponsored workshop hosted by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and in the 2014 Intelligence Community (IC) Analyst-Private Sector Partnership Program, sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Sailer is a graduate of Columbia University of New York, with a Masters in Organizational Psychology. He is an ISO 31000-certified Risk Manager with the Global Institute for Risk Management Standards and a graduate of the Columbia Coaching Certification Program (CCCP), a joint program of Columbia Business School and Teachers College. He is currently participating in Stanford University’s Strategic Decision and Risk Management (SDRM) Program, as well as the Stanford Advanced Project Management Program, and holds a Certificate in Professional Development (CPD) from the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania.

More about Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform

Inspired by the belief that software and computers should adapt to humans, not the other way around, Saffron combines the power of computing with natural brain-like intelligence to make sense of data and anticipate future trends and events. Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform mimics our brain’s ability to associate people, places and things in context, but at scales that far exceed human capabilities. Saffron ingests data from disparate sources and automatically connects the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters. Every time new data is received, Saffron automatically learns about new associations with existing memories to find emergent patterns, similarities, anomalies or sequences, revealing new information that would have remained undetected otherwise. Saffron learns incrementally and adapts in real-time from new incoming data and human feedback.

Saffron integrates with an organization’s existing analytics architecture to not only enhance the speed and volumes at which data can be converted to usable knowledge but also critically improve the accuracy of results.Saffron’s customers apply the Natural Intelligence Platform to a number of hard problems supporting decision making, diagnostics and anticipatory predictions in such areas as anticipating market trends, optimizing processes, identifying extraneous costs, mitigating operational risk and threats, personalizing customer experiences or finding new revenue streams. Industries represented by Saffron customers include Aerospace, Defense, Energy, Financial Services, High Tech Manufacturing, and Philanthropic Organizations.

In March, Saffron announced the completion of a $7 million series B round of venture capital, which will also fund a new global headquarters in Silicon Valley.

About Saffron Technology

Saffron Technology combines the power of computing with brain-like intelligence to make sense of data and anticipate future trends and events. The platform learns incrementally and adapts in real time, ingesting data from disparate sources and automatically connecting the dots to illuminate the knowledge that really matters. Saffron enhances the speed and volumes at which data can be processed but also critically improves the accuracy of results. Businesses using Saffron can anticipate market trends, optimize processes, mitigate risk, personalize customer experiences or find new revenue streams. Founded in 1999, Saffron Technology is headquartered in Los Altos, California. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

Saffron Technology, a company building technology able to process information like the human brain to better help Fortune 1000 companies understand their data and make more informed decisions, today announced that Chris McGugan has joined its Board of Directors to help the company continue its growth trajectory.

“I first invested in the company in 1999. I’ve known since then that Saffron’s approach was way ahead of anything else – even before Big Data became a household term,” McGugan stated. “Fast forward to today and Saffron has taken a quantum leap forward in associative/machine learning with the build-out of its Natural Intelligence Platform which is truly changing the way businesses make informed decisions.”

In development since 1999, the company’s patented associative memory technology finds connections among data across diverse sources, without the need for rules or modeling, while learning incrementally and anticipating outcomes based on patterns it finds in the data. Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform goes beyond finding patterns in the data: it helps clients identify similar events and understand root causes to rapidly inform decisions and reduce unnecessary risk and waste. Saffron is ideal for real-time operational risk intelligence and decision support; for industries including manufacturing, retail, defense, and healthcare.

“We are fortunate to have Chris McGugan lend his talents to our Board. As we continue to broaden the market for our Natural Intelligence Platform, Chris’s insights and experience will be a significant asset to us,” said Saffron CEO Gayle Sheppard. “In particular, Chris will help us accelerate our market penetration in key vertical markets such as manufacturing, healthcare and finance.”

McGugan has been vice president of Vice President and General Manager of Emerging Products & Technology at Avaya since 2008. He previously held senior positions with Symbol Technologies, Cisco Systems and Belkin, among others.

Saffron Technology combines the power of computing with the genius of the human brain to help Fortune 1000 businesses understand what is in their data, analyze risk, predict future outcomes and make more informed decisions. Like the human brain, Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform unifies hybrid data and associates new data inputs with existing ones. It identifies similarities, converging and repeating patterns and learns continuously in the process. Unlike the human brain, Saffron is not limited in size and can process tremendous amounts of data, including prior data inputs, to better anticipate trends and identify anomalies. Founded in 1999, Saffron is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

Hersey to focus on scaling Saffron’s capabilities, broadening its user base and building the next generation of its Natural Intelligence Platform

Cary NC, April 8, 2014 – Saffron Technology, a cognitive computing company combining the genius of the brain with the power of computing to help Fortune1000 businesses turn data into actionable knowledge, today announced that Ian Hersey, well-known technologist and pioneer in the field of Natural Language Processing, has joined the company as Chief Product Officer.

Hersey joins Saffron after over two decades of leadership in unstructured data analysis, multilingual natural language processing and social media monitoring and analysis. Most recently, he was Chief Product Officer at InTTENSITY and CTO of Attensity.

Prior to that, Hersey co-founded and spent over ten years with Inxight Software, where he created a market-leading commercial text analysis product suite that is still utilized by many of the world’s most elite companies following Inxight’s acquisition by SAP. With Saffron, Hersey will be responsible for running the entire product organization,

“This newly created post of Chief Product Officer will be instrumental in propelling Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform as the leader in next generation cognitive systems,” said Gayle Sheppard, Saffron CEO. “We are fortunate to have Ian join us, as his experience developing truly innovative data analytics technology is ideally suited for this leadership role.”

“I’ve been aware of Saffron for many years. The core technology is rock solid, and enables the company to do what others cannot – unify disparate data sources and find actionable knowledge in the data”, explained Hersey. “Together we can fully exploit that potential. We’ll scale to reach new customers and deliver more functionality and value to existing customers.”

In development since 1999, Saffron’s patented associative memory finds connections among data across diverse sources, without the need for rules or modeling, while learning incrementally and anticipating outcomes based on patterns it finds in the data. Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform helps clients rapidly inform decisions and reduce unnecessary risk and waste, making it ideal for real time operational risk intelligence and decision support; for industries including manufacturing, energy, defense, and healthcare.

Last month, Saffron announced the completion of a $7 million series B round of venture capital, which will also fund a new global headquarters in Silicon Valley.

About Saffron Technology

Saffron helps every business benefit from the knowledge in their data to make more informed decisions and prepare for potential outcomes. Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform harnesses the incredible ability of the brain to find meaning in data, but at a scale that far exceeds human capabilities. With each new experience, Saffron builds more memories, learns from outcomes and makes new connections, giving organizations the ability to address new situations in profound and creative ways. Saffron’s track record of successful implementation across multiple industries including manufacturing, healthcare, philanthropy and defense illustrates the ease and impact of using its Natural Intelligence platform. Founded in 1999, Saffron Technology is headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

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Additional funding will allow stronger brand presence, new HQ in Silicon Valley, and the expansion of customer-centric next generation service teams

Cary, NC, March 20, 2014 – Saffron Technology, a cognitive systems company helping Fortune 1000 businesses understand the value of transforming disconnected data into actionable knowledge, today announced that it has closed a $7 million Series B investment round. Funds are earmarked to accelerate business growth, including opening new global headquarters in Silicon Valley.

“Data becomes infinitely more powerful when you tie together its meaning from a multiplicity of disparate sources. Our patented Natural Intelligence Platform unifies all kinds of data – structured and unstructured – in real time, from a large variety of sources and continuously learns about the things in the data without the need for pre-determined rules or models,” said Gayle Sheppard, Saffron Technology CEO. “Now you can automatically see converging and other patterns to anticipate outcomes and prepare to act. These capabilities, combined with our customers’ success with Saffron, position us well for growth. With this additional funding, we will expand customer-centric next generation service teams, build a strong brand presence, create scalability across our business, and establish a Silicon Valley headquarters in spring 2014.”

In development since 1999, Saffron Technology’s patented associative memory finds connections among data across diverse sources, without the need for rules or modeling, while learning incrementally and anticipating outcomes based on patterns it finds in the data. Saffron Natural Intelligence helps clients rapidly inform decisions and reduce unnecessary risk and waste, making it ideal for real-time operational risk intelligence and decision support; for industries including manufacturing, retail, defense, and healthcare. In a data-driven environment, Saffron helps enterprises make more informed decisions, resulting in increases in productivity and reductions in costs,

About Saffron Technology

Saffron Technology combines the power of computing platforms with natural intelligence to help Fortune 1000 businesses, non-government and government organizations analyze risk, predict future outcomes and make better decisions. Like the human brain, Saffron’s Natural Intelligence Platform unifies hybrid data and associates new data inputs with what exists, identifying converging and repeating patterns and learning continuously in the process. But unlike the human brain, Saffron is not limited in size and can process tremendous amounts of data, including prior data inputs, to better anticipate trends and identify anomalies. Founded in 1999, Saffron Technology is currently headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.saffrontech.com.

When old words get stale and overloaded, new words can help reinvigorate our thinking. Summarizing the references on anticipation from my last post, I think there are at least three elements of “anticipation” that help us push away from more common “prediction”:

Time is fundamental. Beyond input-output classification of a current state, time is fundamental to anticipatory representation and inference. Classifying what a thing current is does not imply the full meaning of prediction as something expressly about the future. Classification and other methods are still fundamental, but lag times and sequence representations, for example, are also included. The inference is about what will happen next, at T+1 or in some actionable future, where high expectation meets the ability to change or prepare for the future. True anticipation estimates when something will occur, beyond only that it might occur. More subtly, anticipation optimizes learning and its value over the long-term, considering multiple options and futures. As well, future events are causal; the cognitive process of expecting future events (like a scheduled meeting) leads to other expectations when the future is included as part of the current context.

Learning is constant. Predictive modeling is typically a process of data modeling, which fits a mathematical function to the data in a train-test-deploy procedure, assuming the world doesn’t change after deployment. In a non-stationary world (the real world), incremental learning is required. Furthermore, in the definition of anticipation, incremental means instant. From a brain-like computing perspective, we don’t build and deploy fixed models. We learn all the time, with expectations and un-anticipated novelties driving our attention as known in the Psychology of Learning. We set expectations and then learn most about the world when it does not match those expectations. We attend to novelty, constantly learning more about the world that might gain us more control and preparedness for the world. Optimal unlearning and re-learning (what psychology calls extinction and spontaneous recovery) are also required, such as to track through rapid changes of consumer taste or the economic environment.

Fuzziness is acknowledged. The history of predictive analytics includes the history of Decision Theory and its measurement of “hits” and “misses”. Born out of World War II, the problem was to determine the cost/benefit of firing bullets. Hit or miss. Classification inferences must similarly commit to “firing” and answer and then suffer a miss if wrong. However, more modern measurements of Information Retrieval admit personal and relative relevance. A document is ranked as more or less relevant, not a hit or miss, ultimately defined as whether it is relevant to you and your personal meaning. Unlike AI logic and its assumption of “facts” to give right or wrong answers no matter who is asking, real world knowledge and real answers are more complex and inter-connected. As cognitive beings, we sometimes want or need to stay close to “home” with what we know, other times wanting or needing to explore and learn more. More modern approaches also distinguish classification from categorization, the latter being more contextual and creative such as when a plane (class vehicle) can be used as a bomb (class weapon). Conceptual structures need to be much more fluid, as we learning from our “failure of imagination” on September 11, 2001.

When we think this way, we think more creatively and long term. I remember working with Dan Ariely on advanced personalization systems comparing individual versus collaborative inferencing when faced with new product arrivals and consumer taste changes. As now famously known from his books, Dan has a beautiful way with words. I remember his warning, “The best set of recommendations is not the set of best recommendations.” For example, if I know that you love expensive Merlo wines from California, I should NOT give you five recommendations of expensive Merlos from California. There is no variety; no exploration; no choice in the choice. I could maximize my likelihood of a “hit” on this single transaction, but I would do better to maximize my knowledge of you and your knowledge of my catalogue for the long term. I should include a Californian Merlo or two, of course, but also offer, “I think you might like to explore something new I just received. Let me know how you like it.” Rather than ensure the prediction of a single purchase, I will do better in developing your life-time value as a customer by exploring. Although the distinction is subtle, I will do better to anticipate what you might like rather than predict what you will like. As a criticism against predictive analytics, your tastes will change. If I can learn on the fly (my own brain can, as can Saffron), then these opportunities allow me to learn more about you. If you can learn on the fly (you can), you might find a new taste sensation and remember me for not just my new product but for my service in giving you a real choice.

Saffron provides “connect the dots” anticipatory sense making as well as “illuminate the dots” predictive/anticipatory analytics. Our instant learning, nonlinear, high dimensional, non-parametric classifier has always been at our product’s core. Also due to Dan, we had the pleasure of working with the founders of OpenField Software (see them now at ProductOps), who developed Electronic Learning Assistant (ELLA) for personalized email filtering back in 2002. You need The Wayback Machine to read the glowing reviews at the time, including results of a competitive shootout against 8 competitors (using Bayesian, collaborative, rules, and other methods). ELLA was named “World’s Best Spam Blocker” by PC User Magazine. User reviews hailed it as near flawless, quickly learning on few examples and instantly adapting to changes to email use and the environment of spam and other “incoming”.

As shared at Predictive and Text Analytics World, Saffron’s predictive methods continue to be applied to Threat Scoring for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Condition Based Maintenance for a Global Fortune 100 Manufacturer, demonstrating 100% recall with only a 1% false alarm rate. More recent work with Dr. Partho Segupta at Mt. Sinai Hospital diagnosed heart disease in high dimension, nonlinear echocardiogram data from relatively few examples – and no parameter tuning. See Dr. Segupta’s astounding ASE Feigenbaum Lecture on Big Data and the need for such newer analytic methods in healthcare.

Saffron does prediction. But more toward the time-based definition of anticipation, SaffronMemoryBase has also been successful in predicting the survivability of liver cancer based on a tumor’s mRNA expressions (a highly non-linear control network of all other gene expressions). Looking into the future over more than a year’s time frame, Saffron correctly predicted 90% of patient survival times to the exact week – to the exact week. But such prognostic precision is depressing. We are moving on to the anticipation of treatment options that anticipate better prognoses. Saffron will be further addressing personalization, both for general consumers and healthcare consumers, so watch this space.

Prediction is hot! It seems wrong to say “Prediction is dead” without adding “Long live Prediction!” – if we mean new approaches to prediction as Dr. Hofmann hinted at Text Analytics World last week. More will be said about Saffron’s underlying approach in the near future. The fundamental requirements from classifying diseases to predicting customer churn remain. But anticipation leads to a richer and more cognitive theory of machine learning. Rather than fixed predictive models, an anticipatory system is always exploring and adapting. Our brains are constantly anticipating the next time step and other future time frames, constantly evaluating many contingencies, and if wrong or merely curious, constantly and instantly learning more.